This invention relates to a gel slicer for use in slicing strips from a slab gel or tube gels, and more particularly to such a gel slicer for cutting a plurality of uniform gel slices simultaneously.
Polyacrylamide gels are sliced after electrophoresis for the purpose of anaylzing the activity of the molecules resolved by the gel system and for determination of the pH in the gel. The activity of the molecules may refer to enzyme activity, biological activity, immunological activity, or radioactivity. Enzyme activity is measured by an enzyme assay of the slice containing the enzyme. Biological activity may be measured in various ways including the stimulation or inhibition of the growth of cells by the contents of a slice. Immunological activity may be determined by radioimmunological assay of the contents of a slice, by immuno-diffusion or immuno-electrophoresis. Radioactivity in a slice is determined by scintillation count or autoradiography of the slice. pH measurement is done on a deaerated distilled water extract of a slice and is used to determine the moving boundary in the gel or the determination of the pH gradient in an isoelectric focused gel.
Prior art gel slicing apparatus included a type utilizing a razor blade operating in a guilliotine type device for cutting single slices from a gel separately. Another type of gel slicer utilizes a continuous wire which is laid down laterally across a slot and around pins at the sides of the slot, thereby providing a series of transverse parallel lengths of wire. The gel holder in this latter device consists of a trough with slots extending perpendicular to the trough length and having a depth extending through the bottom of the trough. The gel is placed in the trough and the wire array is forced down on the top of the gel with the wires entering the laterally extending slots. Often times the wires contact the edges of the slots and break, or the tension in the wire changes eliminating any possibility for uniform slice thickness or a clean out through the gel. Electric gel slicers are available in which the gel is frozen to an advancing stage and a single blade cuts off segments separately at preset thickness. These methods all have disadvantages relative to providing uniform slices from the gel and nearly always impart distortion to the gel during the cutting process.
A device is needed for providing simultaneous slicing of uniform slices along the entire length of a particular gel.